Historicist aesthetics of architectural image: Mimesis and memorial in public space

Turkey has been facing an aesthetic revivalism of Ottoman and Anatolian Seljuk architecture within public space, a phenomenon which is having been observed not only in the construction of new public buildings but also the renovation of historical housing districts as part of the so-called “urban transformation” being implemented by the state-owned institution, TOKİ. Seemingly realized as a result of the neoliberal spatial practices of 'urban transformation' in place through destruction and concomitantly reconstruction, the historicist revivalism within state-owned architectural production in Turkey also metamorphoses the collective public memory by the manipulation of the image of urban public space which is mostly characterized by the aesthetic appearance of Ottoman and the Republican architectural heritage of Turkey. Justified or not by a renowned debate on the conflict between modernity and tradition, today, the aesthetical production of contemporary architecture is defined by suggesting the use of historically negotiated architectural types and elements in newly-built contemporary buildings as a means of 'Ottoman and Anatolian Seljuk aesthetics in favor of tradition.' However, this mimetic reconstruction phenomenon is being realized by the contradiction of the relative notions of context and content since the conflict in between the destruction of the Ottoman and Republican architectural heritage, in company with the reconstruction of replicas of buildings, in reality, affiliated with Ottoman architectural types and aesthetics results in a shift in the spatio-temporal perception of public memory. Characterized by the cumulative aesthetical experience of the architectural production, urban public spaces are internal to the collective memory of the society, the image of which has formed out of the social, economical and political context, and thus of the architectural culture through time. Accordingly, the mimetic expression of the classical ages of the Ottoman Empire in the architectural image of public space, manipulates public memory by reconstructing a new manner of time-space which is identified by only the Islamic culture, and out of the plural identities of spatio-temporal experiences inherited from the late Ottoman and Republican period by negotiation. In this sense, this paper aims a critical study on the historicist transformation of urban spectacle through current architectural practices in Turkey.